Marine Velvet Or Ich?

[Thomas Jedlicka]

Hello everybody. in my 300 gallon reef tank with inverts, corals, and fish i have what seems to be ich or marine velvet.

Only two fish out of ten seem to be heavily affected. The first fish to show signs of this was a Blue Ring Angel, however he seems to be fine at this point in time.

That leaves the other two. A small narrow lined puffer and a purple tang. Puffer looks more like ich, but the purple tang has it bad leading me to believe it is possibly velvet.

All fish are eating great. nitrates are around 30 ppm, no nitrite, ideal alkalinity and PH.

Please let me know what you think.

Happy Reefing!

 

[Thomas Jedlicka]

Sorry Video links are here

puffer vid -

Purple Tang vid -

Blue ring angel vid -

EDIT: noticed one other fish has minimal spot on his tail. though was worth mentioning

 

[SaltyT]

Looks like ich. Let's call in the expert @Jay Hemdal

 

[Jay Hemdal]

It does seem to be ich. The best way to diagnose velvet is the fish won't show much in the way of spots, and if they do, the spots are like a fine dust. The big symptoms with velvet is rapid breathing, glassy eyes, not feeding, and hovering in water currents.

The ich spots (trophonts) tend to come and go at first, you may think the fish are getting better, where actually, the parasites have just dropped off in unison to reproduce.

How long since you last added a new fish to the tank?
If it has been a while, you may have actually been in sort of a "ich management" phase where the fish had a simmering infection, and then some stressor caused it to break out. On the other hand, if you recently added a fish, it may have been a carrier.

Do you have any thoughts as to how you plan to treat this?

Jay

 

[Thomas Jedlicka]

It does seem to be ich. The best way to diagnose velvet is the fish won't show much in the way of spots, and if they do, the spots are like a fine dust. The big symptoms with velvet is rapid breathing, glassy eyes, not feeding, and hovering in water currents.

The ich spots (trophonts) tend to come and go at first, you may think the fish are getting better, where actually, the parasites have just dropped off in unison to reproduce.

How long since you last added a new fish to the tank?
If it has been a while, you may have actually been in sort of a "ich management" phase where the fish had a simmering infection, and then some stressor caused it to break out. On the other hand, if you recently added a fish, it may have been a carrier.

Do you have any thoughts as to how you plan to treat this?

Jay

I recently added a few fish. the blue ring had that same look where it seemed like it had recovered from ich. currently in the process of buying a mew uv steralizer so that was my plan.

Any advice on how to treat it?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

The UV sterilizer may limit the speed of the ich infection, but it won’t cure a moderate case like this.
There are not any truly effective treatments that can be used in a display tank with invertebrates. Copper or low salinity are the two best choices. There are a ton of “reef safe” medications on the market, but I don’t recommend any of them.
Jay

 

[Thomas Jedlicka]

The UV sterilizer may limit the speed of the ich infection, but it won’t cure a moderate case like this.
There are not any truly effective treatments that can be used in a display tank with invertebrates. Copper or low salinity are the two best choices. There are a ton of “reef safe” medications on the market, but I don’t recommend any of them.
Jay

Thank you for you input I will see what I can do